Desmond Lives
by ArtOverChaos
Summary: They say if you want a happy ending, it all depends on where you stop telling your story, but what is there was more? What if a ghost in the machine could breathe again?


They say if you want a happy ending, it all depends on where you stop telling your story, but what is there was more? What if a ghost in the machine could breathe again? It's what Clay wanted, and what Juno wanted for even longer.

I thought I was a goner, until I got their wish.

Failed attempted after failed attempt to guard humanity, and meet Juno's desires, had left a lot of technology behind. Technology that _we_ turned back on. Abandoned in this temple that was that 'saved the world', but it was also able to save something else.

Me.

These machines were designed in hopes they could transfer consciousness, and they could easily do that. The problem was the waiting. Lingering in these damned machines will do a number on you, and the DNA stored. The thing that made it impossible for Those Who Came Before.

When I touched the eye my genetic material was copied and converted into digital code. Synced like a backup copy. While Juno and Abstergo got what they wanted, I unwittingly remained. Juno vowed to play her part, and now I have the chance to play another one. All I had to do is reverse the digitization. I wish I could have told Clay that he wasn't crazy to think there had been a way out after all.

But being inside here was different than the Animus Black Room, or the rooms unlocked with data fragments. I could think but I couldn't see or feel. I don't know how long it took me to reach out to another system, or how much longer it took to find the right one. Time was so different here.

I opened my eyes, at first amazed I could even do so. Quickly, I brought my hands up in front up me, balling them up and releasing them like it was the greatest thing. I pushed the sleeve of my hoodie up to even find my tattoo still there between straps of leather.

"This is the greatest fucking thing guys!" I nearly yelled and finally looked up for Shaun, Rebecca and my father. But they weren't there. There was only me in this shit hole of a temple. "Oh," I breathed out.

I guess I should have expected that. I _died_.

"Now what do I do?" I asked myself. Able to at least take comfort that I had an actual voice again.

Without Shaun and Rebecca, what friends did I have left? Wasn't like Lucy or Clay were still around volunteering their thoughts. Wasn't like my father introduced me during an Assassin Family reunion. Who could I trust and not get killed in the process?

Contacts fluttered through my mind making me cringe as the data dump gave me a headache. I braced myself up on one of the consoles. I had forgotten that being flesh and blood, meant pain. One feeling I wasn't exciting to welcome back.

I refused to focus on any of them and waited for the tide to pass over me, letting out an uneven breath afterwards. I could do this. I didn't need help from old dead ghosts. "Think Desmond," I whispered to myself. What did I have going for me?

The computers. There was someone I could trust to at very least be against Abstergo. They had emailed me help before.

After some thought I decided there was no good way to email an unknown hacker organization. Maybe I should have just left alone, run out of this temple and forget everything that happened. Maybe head back to my friends and give them a scare in the process. Even if I somehow could I wouldn't turn my head, but I wouldn't throw away this second chance at a new life either. I could still be a valuable player. Only this time, and for once, it would be in my way.

I thought back, trying to think what had Erudito emailed me before. Make sure you stay in the loop. What to tell them though? "Ps, not dead," likely would cut it. So, I did the most logical thing I could think of. I echoed their message back to them.

The sent the email off and waited. Staring at the screen like a reply would instantly be had. Real time sucks.

These systems had once been used to protect the world and now I was using them to email. Geez, my freaking afterlife was as weird as my actual life had been.

I decided to take a seat, and didn't actually mind the hard ground for once. It was steady and actually being able to touch it was oddly comforting.

It wasn't long before I got back up and started looking around for anything left over. My backpack was clearly gone, not that I was surprised that everything of value had been looted. Frustrated, I kicked a stray water bottle that had rolled away from the trash. It wasn't until it bounced off a wall did I see the value in it. There hadn't been much water left in it, but there had been some.

I walked over and lazily picked the bottle up. Unscrewing the cap to notice a smudged ring of light pink around the rim. My mouth twitched into a brief smile. Thanks, Rebecca.

I shook the bottle to get the last drops of water out. Those few drops tasting like the greatest thing ever.

An email came a short time later. I don't know what I expected, but I ended up with a message that consisted of a single question mark. Whoever I had reached, whether a group or a single person, was at least curious. I could work with that.

I replied: I want to help, come find me.

This time a reply almost instantly came. Another simple message this time reading, "Who is this?"

I'm sure my name was in the from line, but it was likely they just didn't believe it was actually me. Makes sense for a group of hackers not to fully trust something that can be hacked. What could I even say?

Nothing would really do it but I was going try. I thought about it for a good twenty minutes of anything that could prove it was me. Finally I decided to go with, "In April you gave me Access. I'm free to return the favor." Could someone else know they emailed me my friends passwords back then? Totally. But all I had to do was keep their attention.

Another hour passed and paced around nervously. The only thing keeping me from going completely paranoid was an inner probability calculator telling me that the odds were I was safe this time. An upgrade that I actually would have been happier without.

This time Erudito's message read: 010000110110111101101101011010010110111001100111

My eyes seemed to cross as I looked at the group of numbers. Something in my vision shifting to reveal the word, "Coming."

I shook my head as if I took a shoot of vodka that was too strong.

Fuck, did they have to try to be cute about it? English would have done the job.

I decided to venture up to the surface. The promise of fresh air and the concern about hackers getting control of the temple being enough to gut punch my queasiness of leaving. A part of me feared leaving, like I'd fall to bits if I strayed too far away.

Outside I was greeted by silent stone walls and the crisp evening air. As I breathed in a lungful I reminded myself I was actually, and truly alive.

Things were ok. I was ok.

The sound of a car set my nerves on fire like a match struck against them. I headed out of the cave since it didn't have any cover to speak of and ducked down behind bushes instead.

I expected or maybe had just hoped for the van that Shaun drove here, instead a blue pickup truck pulled up. It wasn't all that big, enough for maybe four if they wanted actual seats and squished.

This time I actually tried to actually pull on eagle vision to see if friend or foe had come to say hello. A move that felt like I was blinding myself since my hiding spot glowed bright white, but between the leaves I spotted a blue that gave me hope.

I stepped out into the open and my maybe-future-ally sharply turned towards the movement. I spotted the glint of a gun before my eyes toned back enough to get a look at its wielder. A girl with streaks of dyed hair and a labret piecing almost seemed to match her weapon since it was a gunmetal colored small stood there.

The woman stared at me with an expression that I was certain questioned my sanity. I know that look. I'd seen it enough times. "Are you ok?" she asked.

"I think I am now," I replied, realizing only after it would have sounded like a flirt if I had been tending bar.

A fact that didn't faze her however. "Who are you?" she asked, the tone gave away that she knew but couldn't bring herself around to believing yet.

"Desmond," I replied.

"Miles?"

I laughed for half a second. I think I was just glad she didn't call me Subject 17. "Yeah. And I'd appreciate it if you didn't shoot me." Dying was the sort of thing you tried to only do once.

"Right," she commented as her eye brows went up. Whoever they sent looked so natural with a gun it was like she almost it wasn't just another part of her. "Your kind is a twitchy bunch," she added and lowered her gun.

"Subjects?" I asked bitterly.

"No," she replied and I would almost swear I heard some sort of accent as she extended the word slightly. "Assassins."

"You're not- one of them?"

That got a laugh out of her. "Nah."

Her soft amused expression soon shifted to clinical one, like I was something to be studied. Now that was a look I hadn't seen since the early days with Vidic. Instinctively I took half a step back before I had even realized I did. It only made sense for her to be careful. Maybe she thought I was a cheap Piece of Eden trick, or that Juno was riding along in my bones. But I knew Juno's plans well enough now to know she was in the grey, away from me for once.

"It's just me," I ventured, "Both the Apple and Juno are gone."

My 'new friend' cocked her head before holstering her gun. "I like to call her Space Bitch."

"What?" I said coughing out a laugh this time. That was both wrong and sort-of funny. "That is so not accurate."

"I think it's the headpiece," she offered, pointing to her own head for a moment. "You said you wanted to help?"

Right, I needed to get out of here. Needed a ride, needed food, somewhere to sleep. How did one do this without a team? "Yes," I replied mostly buying time as my mind drew a blank the one time I wanted it filled with a memory of a plan. "Erudito is against the Templars and Abstergo and therefore I'm on your side."

"What are your terms?"

My terms? I thought to myself. No one ever asked me that before. I keep my mouth shut for a moment so a long 'uh' didn't stammer out. "I'll- let you pick my missions, but I decide if I want to go." Erudito's representative seemed ready to agree, but I quickly added to my list. "And I don't think I want to kill anyone else."

She narrowed her eyes for a briefest moment before giving a single nod. "I think we can live with that," she replied, "Are you armed?"

I licked my lips before I nodded. Looking once again down at my hands, I flexed and my hidden blade extended out past my fingers. It had been there the whole time but I hadn't even given it a thought. It had been digitized with me. How sick was that? What did it say about us, about me, that was included?

"If you end up stabbing me with one I'm going to find a way to still shoot your ass," she warned. I must have been staring off for a moment to raise an alarm.

I smiled, then shook my head at everything. "That's a fair deal."

"Let's get going," she commented as she headed back to her truck.

I nervously followed, reminding myself I wasn't being kidnapped this time. It was bigger problem for me than outsiders might realize.

As I got in the passenger's seat I found myself trying to calculate the odds of this ending in some sort-of hidden blade/pistol homicide. So obsessed with the math that I was still thinking about it when the truck shifting into gear.

I needed to think about something else. Anything else.

"So, you are Erudito?" I asked in hopes of any short of small talk really.

"Mhm," she replied without taking her eyes off the road, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."

It seemed whatever was going on in my head hadn't been able to push out memories of Wizard of Oz. I know she was trying to play it like she was the sole person behind things but something in the tone gave it away. Maybe I just had been around Shaun enough to be able to detect sarcasm.

"I don't even know your name," I followed up with.

"You can call me-," she paused like she was mentally trying on names. "Ev."

"Evy?"

Her right hand lifted from the wheel forming a sign that I didn't really understand. "E-V," she spelled out, her gesture changing into a new sign that I assumed was a V.

I stared over at her a moment, curious if those were her initials or if the connection merely that it was just a letter longer than Erudito's plain E handle. Either way I didn't press further.

The ride was bumpy and reminded me of the ride here. My father had been riding in the back with me at the time. I felt like I should tell him that I was alright, but I had said my goodbyes, made my peace and what not.

"You know your friends think you are dead, right?"

"Yeah," I said looking away to something else as equally as meaningless as the trees outside.

"I don't know why you called us. Don't you want to go back?"

I shifted uncomfortable in my seat. After watching so many stories, so many lifetimes, I just somehow new my story wasn't theirs anymore. I think I mumbled a no, but I not completely sure.

I was staring out the window again by time Ev spoke up. "So, Desmond. How did you end up-," she started, really focusing on me instead of the road this time. Something flickered behind her eyes, there was she was holding back from telling me. Maybe something else happened to me that I didn't know. "In that seat," she finished.

How do I explain this without sounding like a nutcase? I was stored inside a computer and pinballed my way into the right system that was able to reproduce my likeness back into the world. That I managed to pull of what I-want-to-be-a-real-girl-again-Juno hadn't been able to because she was too weak from sitting in storage for ages.

I wasn't that I didn't have the knowledge to explain it. I had too much information. Do I bring up sages? Or leave them out? Explain it in technical detail? Maybe Juno's shit really was still in my head. My hands went up to my temples as if to baby the pain that knotted there. I shoved the thoughts back as well as I could.

"Have you seen Tron?" I offered instead. An answer that was 100% from my life.

"Yeah, it's like our bible," she replied with snark and a smile that made me feel better and miss my friends all in one.

The humor actually seemed to help. I don't even want to imagine what would have happened if she were cruel instead. "Thank you, by the way." I wasn't sure if I was thanking her for the ride, for coming, or for just not finding me as bat shit crazy as I sometimes felt.

"It's what I do," Ev said rhythmically enough that I would wager she had said it a number of times before. "So where did you want to go?"

Did you ever realize you are really bad at something, simply because no one ever let you try before? The last time I had been given free reign of where I wanted to be I ran away. "I don't know," I said and it felt like the realistic thing all day.

"Well, leave it to the good o' folks at Erudito to come prepared. In the glove compartment there is a file. Check it out," Ev commented and I distinctly noted she didn't move closer to grab it herself.

I raised a brow but leaned forward and opened it to find a manila folder, ignoring the decent sized box it was sitting on top of. "Anson Peake," I read off one of the sheets.

"Do you know him?"

"No. Wait, yes," I started, but something corrected me. "Project Manager for Project Legacy." Whatever knowledge that been downloaded about him I had seemed to picked up as well. The reason I wasn't cringing from it was because there wasn't much about the guy.

"We sort-of hacked into his systems and got him hired," Eve explained, "Well, more accurately he ran away from Abstergo fearing his life."

"As targets do," I commented as I eyed the files. There really wasn't a lot about him here either. The file was filled with what seemed to be ridiculously useless information like that his favorite team was Manchester United.

"We narrowed it down to a city in Maine. What to go check to for us?" Eve offered what I assumed to be my first mission.

"I guess I could," I said with a shrug.

"Sweet."

While that comment fit, it struck me as odd. "Was this your mission that you are pawning off to me?" I was bold enough to ask.

"Do you always ask this many friggin questions?" she countered.

I pressed my lips together, holding back a quick reply I could think of. They never worked with Shaun and I doubted they'd have any more success with her. "Well I'll do it, as long as we can stop somewhere to eat. I honestly can't remember the last time I ate anything."

"Your terms are fair," Ev smiled.

Maybe I should have asked for something more. "You know you'll actually have to buy it too?"

"What?" she replied like it was the most ridiculous thing she heard all day. When there is seriously no way it could have been.

"They looted my wallet."

"Vultures," she scoffed before caving. "Fine. Wouldn't want you to get arrested for some 12th century pick pocketing techniques."

It concerned me that she knew anything about that. "How considerate of you."

"Erudito lives to serve the people," she winked.


End file.
